A Place Of Comfort For Parents Of Gays

Central Florida's Parents And Friends Of Lesbians And Gays, Now In Its Sixth Year, Provides A Forum For Understanding.

June 15, 1994|By Luz Villarreal of The Sentinel Staff

The parents had been swapping war stories for about an hour when they decided it was time for a break.

Most escaped their unforgiving metal folding chairs to grab cookies and punch. But one woman stayed away, taking a few sips from her cup of juice while weighing an important decision, one she had spoken about to the others.

She was afraid. And ashamed, she had told them. Could she step out of the closet where she has been hanging her feelings of guilt like an old sweater?

Could she tell her friends her son is gay?

''I'm beginning to wonder if my friends are my true friends,'' said the 52-year-old Longwood mother, clasping her hands as she measured each word. ''Everybody I know has made a negative remark about gays.''

The woman and the 31 other people in the room were your neighbors. Doctors. Lawyers. Teachers. Housewives. They say they often are caught in an unfriendly, fearful crossfire as they deal with issues like AIDS, religious beliefs and increasing gay activism.

So once a month these members of the Orlando-based Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays meet at a downtown church to provide support and information.

PFLAG of Central Florida was the first such support group to be formed in the state. It began six years ago with 12 members and today has 45. Florida now has 20 such chapters.

Members talk about how to tell friends and relatives, including brothers and sisters, about a gay child. They talk about negative comments and attitudes from friends and family. They talk about AIDS, about gay bashing, about how churches view homosexuality. And they talk about how to better understand and accept a child's sexual orientation.

''As equally hard as it is for a child to come to terms with their homosexuality, it's very painful for a parent,'' said Karen Turner, a Winter Park psychologist and licensed mental health counselor. ''Parents wonder, 'How much hate will my child put up with? Will my child's life be hard?' Society has very clear attitudes about it.''

Turner, whose daughter is a lesbian, holds group therapy sessions for parents of gay children, although she is not a PFLAG member.

Parents react differently to their children's homosexuality, Turner said. Some make minor adjustments in their expectations that their children will date someone of the opposite sex, marry and have kids. Others need time and support to cope.

Some never accept it.

''It's something we don't expect as parents,'' Turner said. ''It's a deviation of what we imagine their lives will be.''

All the parents in the room had a different story of how they learned about their child's homosexuality.

The news came rather abruptly for the Longwood mother, who asked for privacy reasons that her name not be published. About three years ago, during the Christmas holidays, her son dropped the bombshell as he and his parents shared dinner.

''He said, 'Mom, Dad, I have something to tell you,' '' she recalled.

She felt something bad was coming, and she didn't want to hear it. Something inside her told her to get up, go to the kitchen and do the dishes. But the news came anyway.

''I'm gay,'' he told his parents.

The mother said she never stops ''wishing it weren't so.'' But she added that ''a mother knows. Deep in my heart I knew . . . ''

She said she and her son had been close but that they grew apart after his announcement.

''I cried a lot that first year,'' she said. ''I felt I had this terrible secret to hide and now he was so happy, relieved he got it off his chest. He went on about his life. I went into therapy.''

Such feelings are typical of parents dealing with news that their child is gay, said Allene Baus, the president and founder of PFLAG's Orlando chapter.

''There's a saying 'Your child goes out of the closet and you go in,' '' she said. ''It doesn't happen to every parent, but it does frequently.''

What is important is that parents realize they are not alone and they have a place to talk openly about their feelings, Baus said.

''We're a warm and accepting group of people,'' she said. ''We're trying to be a help, and we have no ax to grind.''

While some parents struggle with their own prejudices, others must wrestle with religious convictions. PFLAG addresses this subject too.

''My feeling is if we are made in God's image, would he have made homosexuals and made a mistake? I think not,'' Baus said. ''I think homosexuals are all part of God's plan, as well as everything else.''

Baus, 59, said she learned her daughter was a lesbian when a friend mentioned it to her, unaware that Baus did not know. She said her daughter, now 35, was reluctant to talk about her sexual orientation even when Baus said she was open-minded.

''She told me something that is still exceedingly chilling,'' Baus said. ''She said, 'Not when it's your kid, Mom.' I was saddened and upset that she felt we would disown her, that she could not tell us.''

Baus said some parents, like her, have become activists after seeing what their children face.